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OC Museum of Art launches Women in Wine series this week

May 2, 2023

The Orange County Museum of Art is launching a five-part food and beverage series called Women in Wine that kicks off Thursday evening, May 4. The series is a collaboration between the museum, Catering by Mix Mix, and Argaux, a female-owned wine purveying trio founded by Arden Gilfillan, Margaux Reaume, and Lexi Jones.

Alyssa McDiarmid, managing partner of Populaire Modern Bistro and Catering by Mix Mix at OCMA, cultivated a friendship with Jones. In May 2022, they began discussing ways to celebrate women and the local wine community. They eventually decided to launch the Women in Wine series at OCMA.

“Now that we’re settled in at OCMA, it gives us more time to do these events,” McDiarmid says. “How could we highlight and make it more cohesive for everyone, but also feature different parts of the museum? We’re trying to build up a fruitful relationship with the neighborhood and we’re still new here, at Verdant. People are still discovering us and I hope the series opens that door to more of that discovery.”

The inaugural event is intended to be extremely accessible.

“Something casual that doesn’t feel so scripted,” says McDiarmid. Sometimes people go to these events and it’s intimidating. The goal is you go and aren’t judged. You could be with your friends, learn something and eat some delicious cheeses. Lexi will bring in a bunch of wine from Savoie.”

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The pairings begin with wine and cheese but as the series progresses, the food options lean towards the more unexpected. A burger and burgundy night on Friday, June 16, appetizers inspired by the 13 Women: Variation II exhibit on Thursday, July 20, and the series culminates with a 200-person sitdown farm-to-table dinner on Thursday, Sept. 21.

“I was just at Terrace (by Mix Mix) the other day,” says McDiarmid, who also manages the front of house and wine pairings at the restaurant group’s other South Coast Plaza location. She enjoys the tempo of her work. “I get to wear different hats and I get to enjoy different cuisines.” But it’s events like the Women in Wine series where she can showcase other women in the industry that really excites her.

We caught up with McDiarmid to ask about the series origins, what event she is most excited about, and why vegetables work so unexpectedly well with wine.

This interview is edited for brevity and clarity.

Q. How did the Women in Wine series get started?

A. The museum is always looking at more programming. Obviously, we’re a museum. But I thought, what about bringing more food and wine into it. There are so many wines you can feature and I wanted to do a more casual format.

Lexi (Jones) from Argaux is a good friend of mine. I have been working with her for years. She and her two partners started their business during the pandemic. I’m so enamored with what they’re doing (at Argeaux) and it just fits with what we’re doing at the museum with the “13 Women” (exhibit). Lexi has just put her all into Argeaux. She’s traveled around the world and met all these winemakers. I really wanted to work with them because they’re a female-owned company.

Q. Who thought of the burger and burgundy event?

A. (There’s) this book called “Big Macs and Burgundy: Wine Pairings for the Real World.” I thought that was just great and we needed to do an event based on that idea.

This is a sit-down dinner. We’re serving the burger from Populaire (Modern Bistro). We’re trying to cross promote the brands so that’s a fun way to do that. They’ll pour a premier cru Burgundy and something else … People talk about “pizza wine” (inferring that it’s a cheaper drink). But, I thought, how fun that people are taking a more serious approach to these pairings.

The idea of the whole series is to pair something you know (the burger or fried chicken) with something that you don’t necessarily know, and that’s the wine side of it. I like the idea of bringing people who are excited about food and wine into the museum.

Q. Museums usually aren’t the first places you think of for great food. Why is Verdant at OCMA different?

A. Heidi (Zuckerman, CEO and director of OCMA) said, “It’s great to be on this list of restaurants in museums. (Life magazine listed Verdant as one of the 5 best museum restaurants in the U.S. along with heavyweights such as The Modern at MOMA.) It’s only our first six months. We wanted to parlay this into something more and that is what the Women in Wine series is. We’re a museum first, but what if people were coming here just to go to the restaurant. It might be a way to have more female visitors come in and it celebrates the founding 13 Women.

The last event, Endless Summer, is a farm-to-table dinner. We’ll serve flatbread, pastas, kind of like The Ecology Center’s Green Feast, but at the museum. We’re pouring rosés and it’s going to be outside on the terrace. We’re hoping to get 200 guests. The others will be smaller, 75 to 100 people.

Q. You offer traditional burgers and fried chicken. But you also have vegetarian alternatives. Why was it important to offer plant-based dishes to pair with the wines?

A. That was a big part of doing the series, we’re offering something for everyone. We’re not moonlighting. We are a plant-based concept in our everyday life at Verdant.

Pairing wine with vegetables, it pulls out so many components that meat with its iron and blood flavors can’t match. You get different characteristics from the vegetables. You pick up on something else. The floral notes or the salt. It’s actually a really cool part of pairing the food here at Verdant. I do appreciate (plant-based cooking) so much more. People take for granted what you can do with vegetables.

Q. How can you substitute vegetables for fried chicken?

A. One of the things that I noticed here (at Verdant) was that at first we were pooh-poohed for not serving a burger. But, honestly we’ve converted people. I’ve had people say, “I would eat more vegetables if they were made this way.”

I don’t like anything pretending it’s not. So I don’t like processed or dyes in things. But the mushroom works as the fried chicken (substitute). We were thinking about what we could do that would be meaty and still have that fried chicken vibe. That’s it.

Q. What event are you most excited about?

I’m super excited about the Champagne and fried chicken event (on Aug. 17). That reads very Populaire, too. (Populaire Modern Bistro is known for its caviar garnished fried chicken with uni.) We’ll have chicken buckets for everyone.

With a lot of our partners and donors it makes sense for them to have access to these experiences. The burgundy and burger dinner will feature higher end wine pairings which will be interesting for everyone.

Women in Wine events

May 4: Cheese & Wine Tasting, $85

June 16: Burgundy & Burgers, $120

July 20: Summer Spritz & Artist Spotlight, $65

Aug. 17: Fried Chicken & Champagne, $75

Sept. 21: Endless Summer “Farm-to Table-Experience,” $120

All events start at 6 p.m. and are for guests 21 and older only. For more information and tickets, visit ocma.art/calendar/women-in-wine-wine-and-cheese/

Orange County Register

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